Chapter 17: Awakening
Twilight opened her eyes as soon as she felt the faint predawn paint itself along the horizon. She hadn’t had a single wink of sleep all night. Well, she wasn’t the only one, she admitted with a brief mental grin. Starburst hadn’t had much sleep either.
She gently lifted one of his enclosing forelegs and slipped out of his embrace. He mumbled and smacked his lips, but didn’t wake. Well, she supposed she had tired him out last night... She blushed, but managed a little smile as she extricated herself from the satin tangles and fell softly off the side of the bed and to the floor. She headed for the His & Hers ensuites. She took ‘His’ - her own had a much bigger tub but Starburst’s had the better shower. Twilight wasn’t really in the mood for a bath right now. She’d had a bath with her husband last night. Baths were the punctuation mark to the end of long and weary days. Showers were the capitalisation at the beginning of a brand-new sentence. She opened the shower door and twisted the knob all the way around, then stepped into the steaming jets.
Five-thirty in the morning. Too early? Will she still be asleep?
The shampoo had barely touched her mane before it was rinsed out again. She did the same with her tail, then she grabbed the soap and furiously lathered herself up and washed the suds away under the streams of lavender-scented water. She punched the knob, killing the flow. Less than ten seconds. Her old friend Rainbow Dash would have been proud.
But what about another of my old friends? Should I go and see if she’s awake?
She didn’t bother with a towel. She just wrung the water out of her coat and hair with magic, then evaporated the remaining dampness. She grabbed her toothbrush and started to scrub. Her reflection in the mirror looked back at her with a slightly sad expression.
We didn’t have nearly enough time together yesterday. We didn’t catch up at all.
Twilight rinsed and gargled and rinsed again. She drew her hooves through her mane, but it had already recovered from the sudsy-wet assault. It was wafting about on its own and looking as perfect as ever. Sometimes she missed hairbrushes. She hadn’t needed them for so long, but there was something almost therapeutic about the simple act of brushing your hair.
Simple pleasures. What about Pinkie? I could brush her hair for her, though it doesn’t look like she needs it, it’s so long and straight... Maybe I could help her style her mane like she used to wear it. Maybe she doesn’t know how she used to wear it. I’ll show her some pictures. I have loads of old photos and films and paintings in magical storage.
Twilight tiptoed back into the bedroom - her husband was still snoring quietly - and snuck over to the door leading down to the main study of their tower. She opened it, stepped through, closed it again silently, her hoof lingering on the knob for a moment. She spread her wings and glided softly down to the dark landing, then jumped over the edge of the mezzanine and alighted again near the entrance doors. “Morning, gents,” she whispered to the two pegasi as she opened one of the huge gilded doors and trotted into her lamplit corridor.
The guards started. Twilight wasn’t usually up this early, and her stealthiness within her tower had managed to take them by surprise. But the Protectorate Guard were the best of the best. The Royal Guardsponies had both recovered their composure before she could even blink. “Good morning, Your Highness,” the senior guard said quietly. “Should I alert the breakfast hall?”
“No, no, let’s not wake the chefs up. I’m not having breakfast yet, it’s far too early. I’m going to see our guest. Well, I’m going to go and see if she’s awake, at least. It is very early.” They saluted, and Twilight trotted along the short, curving corridor and down the winding staircase.
She walked along the flowery vine-grown passage atop the wide parapet that the tall Royal Towers all rose from, and paused at the arch leading up into Starburst’s old residence. Should she do this? Should she just barge in, invade Pinkie’s privacy, probably wake her up? Just because she desperately wanted to see her old friend again?
She made up her mind and clopped lightly up the stairs. The guards at the top were as alert as ever, and she hadn't crept up on this pair. They stiffened and saluted as she approached. “Good morning, Your Highness,” they whispered in unison as she stopped before them.
“Is she asleep, do you think?” Twilight asked quietly, her forehead creasing.
“Well, Your Highness...” The senior guard looked embarrassed. “Well, no, as a matter of fact. She’s, um, she’s been awake all night,” the lieutenant said. “You can still hear her now, Princess.”
Twilight tilted her head and cocked an ear. She could just hear faint sobs coming through the doors. “She’s... She’s been doing this all night?” she asked the guards.
They both nodded. “We asked if we could be of assistance, Your Highness, as did the shift that we relieved at midnight. She said that she was fine,” the young lieutenant said, his own brow lining with worry. “She didn’t look fine. She didn't look alright at all, Your Highness, but she insisted that she was perfectly fine and asked us not to make a fuss. I’m sorry, Princess Twilight. Should we have alerted you?”
“No, it’s okay. If she wanted anything I’m sure she would have asked.” Twilight moved forwards and pushed one of the doors open gently. She stepped hesitatingly into the room within. It was lit by a few hanging lamps. She looked around for the source of the soft sobbing she heard.
Pinkie Pie was sitting over by the fireplace, looking at something that lay on the floor in front of her. “Pinkie? Pinkie, what’s wrong?” she called softly, trotting over. Her long-dead friend’s shoulders shook. Twilight hesitated for a moment, then put her foreleg around those shoulders and sat on the floor next to her.
She looked down at her old friend and remembered the day they’d first met - on the morning of Midsummer’s Eve, almost nineteen hundred and forty years ago. Pinkie was the first pony she’d met in Ponyville. Maybe ‘met’ wasn’t the right word; they weren’t properly introduced until later that afternoon. But Pinkie was the very first of her legendary friends that Twilight had ever seen or spoken to. So she was, in a way, the very first friend that Twilight had ever made.
Twilight had changed a lot since that day. Aside from her colour and Cutie Mark, she looked completely different now. She was tall, taller than any fully-grown mare, taller than most stallions. Not quite as tall as Celestia - Big Sister had always been taller than herself or Luna. She was slim and slender, almost svelte, and she had a longer muzzle than was the norm. Her mane and tail were both very long - they would have dragged on the floor if her innate magic didn’t keep them gently bunched and wafting in a nonexistent magical breeze. Her horn was a lot longer and sharper than any unicorn horn, and tiny golden motes of magic winked all around it when she wasn’t holding her powers in check. And of course, she had wings. Somehow all of this made her more regal-looking than she’d ever felt she deserved to look, despite the fact that she was, apparently, destined to be indestructible immortal royalty. Her alicorn wings were easily twice the span of pegasus wings and far more majestic-looking when raised. They looked more like the wings of a swan than anything else. Starburst had once teasingly called her a six-foot-tall, four-legged purple swan with a horn and an attitude. She’d laughed at his teasing.
She wasn’t in the mood to laugh at the moment, however, because here was Pinkie Pie. A pony who, despite being old and wrinkled with a greying coat when she’d died, was crying here on the floor of Starburst’s old study, very much alive and very much young. She looked exactly the same as she’d done on the day the two ponies had first met - except for the long, straight hair, and the horn of course. The top of Pinkie’s horn didn’t even come up to Twilight’s eyes, even when her head was upright. It wasn’t upright at the moment though. She followed her friend’s gaze down.
Twilight recognised the item on the floor at once. It was a small framed painting that had sat on Starburst’s mantelpiece above the fireplace just in front of them. It was one of many things she’d given him when he was young and she’d told him all about herself. A very, very old painting. It was almost uncannily realistic; it had been copied from the original photograph by a master portrait artist about seventeen hundred years ago. This was one of the most important moments of her life, captured on canvas. Twilight drew in a small breath. Pinkie sobbed again and gently touched her hooftip to the happy pink earth pony in the painting.
“Oh, Pinkie...” Twilight didn’t know what else to say. Her old friend stroked the painting again and then looked up and into her face. Twilight blinked in surprise. She was amazed to see that Pinkie Pie’s face was alive with happiness. Tears were streaming from her eyes, but they were, apparently, tears of joy.
“Twilight, Twilight, Twilight! Look how happy I was! I knew something was missing! I haven’t been happy for so long! Will you tell me about me? I don’t remember me at all!” She looked back at the painting and laughed. “Look at my mane! It looks crazy! I don’t remember any of us! That white unicorn’s sooooo pretty! And that dragon! He looks so handsome! I’ve never seen a dragon wearing a tuxedo before!”
Twilight had a catch in her voice. She coughed discreetly. “The, uh, the white unicorn is our friend Rarity, and the dragon is Spike. This was their wedding day.”
“Wow, that’s Rarity? She looks like a princess! Look at that dress!”
Twilight sniffed and chuckled. She wiped her muzzle. “All our dresses were pretty spectacular, you have to admit. I mean, just look at them. Rarity made them all herself. She was a designer. It was her special talent and she was a natural at it. But she sold her business after they got married and they started taking care of orphans. Sold it for a fortune. It was more of an empire than a business, to be honest, it set them and their kids up for life.” She blinked. “Set them up for several lifetimes, in fact. Four hundred and sixty billion bits, I think she gave it all away for.”
Pinkie was bouncing where she sat. “Wow, she’s so pretty! I used to know her?! Wow! So who’s everypony else in the picture apart from you and me and Rarity and Spike?”
Twilight took a breath and smiled with remembrance. “That’s Applejack on the left, with her youngest daughter Applecrisp. That’s Rainbow Dash next to them, and the little filly in the air above her is Rainbow Rush. Just like her mother when she was younger, never on the ground. Then the pony with the bluebirds holding up her train, that’s Fluttershy. She was probably the kindest soul I ever met. Then Rarity and Spike, and that handsome earth stallion is Bramblebrush, Fluttershy’s husband and Spike’s best mane.” She chuckled. “He was Spike’s best friend. He and Spike both had an incredible gift for plants of all kinds. He was just... so... perfect for Fluttershy. Then there’s me of course, looking all small and unicorn-like -”
“Nah, your horn’s too long. And don’t forget the wings!” Pinkie pointed out. “The dress works really well with them. They go great with all that silk!”
“Heh. Thanks. I was only thirty-six. I hadn’t, um, hadn’t quite finished growing up, I guess. Then at the end there’s you and Oat-”
Twilight’s eyes opened wide and she gawked at the brown filly at the far right of the painting, standing next to the earth-pony-Pinkie Pie with a spectacular grin on her face. Wow. She hadn’t thought this through. She hadn’t thought this through at all. What the hell was she going to say?
“And who?” Pinkie prompted. “Who’s the one on the end?”
“Ah, well, you see,” Twilight spluttered. “There... There were... It was Rarity’s choice, they were all perfect for the job, you understand, Rarity wanted the traditional three flower maidens, okay, and so then -”
“Yeah, Twilight, I get that.” Pinkie rolled her eyes, grinning. “This is the wedding party, right? Bride and groom, best mane, bridlemaids, and the flowerfillies. Applecrisp, Rainbow Rush and the little brown filly with the poofy hair -” Pinkie stopped talking suddenly. She made a small choking noise. Her eyes looked like they were about to bug out of her head as she stared at the painting, looking rapidly back and forth from the little filly’s light-brown mane to her old self’s own. Aside from the colour, they looked exactly the same. They were identical.
“She has my mane,” Pinkie breathed. “My old fluffy mane. And her Cutie Mark, it’s a bunch of balloons. Like mine, but she’s got five of them. Who... Who is she, Twilight?”
“That’s...” Twilight could barely find her voice. All she could do was whisper. “That’s your daughter Oatmeal. Your sixth daughter. You had seven. And four colts.” Pinkie’s face had frozen at this. Twilight continued shakily. “They were... They were all wonderful, Pinkie. They were all amazing and beautiful and... You had more than a hundred great-great-grandfoals by the time you di-” Twilight choked. She tried again. “By the time you di-” Her voice completely failed her. She tried to cough but she couldn’t. Her lungs didn’t want to work right now.
“By the time I died?” Pinkie whispered. Twilight shuddered, then she nodded.
Pinkie threw herself at Twilight and yanked the alicorn into a massive hug. “Wow! Wowie wowie wow! Can you tell me about them?! I want to hear all about them! I want to hear everything about them! All of them! Oh, Twilight! I had a family! I had children! I had kids! Grandfoals and great-grandfoals and I’m so happy and I just don't know what to say and -”
Pinkie seemed to lose the power of speech, and started simply shrieking with delight. It was too much for Twilight, far too much. She grabbed her oldest pony friend tight and started wailing as she completely lost control of herself. Too many emotions, and they were all too strong.
Several minutes later, Twilight sat back and wiped her nose as Pinkie patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “You feel better?” the impossible unicorn asked. Twilight nodded, wiping her eyes now as well. “So, uh, what do you ponies do around here in the mornings? I dunno about you but I’m hungry!”
Twilight managed a laugh. “Oh, Pinkie,” she said, grinning despite her tears, “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much. I, uh, I don’t, I just don’t deserve to have you here.” She grabbed the surprised pink pony again, hugged her tight. Pinkie squeaked. “I’ve missed you. Will you stay with me?”
“Uh, sure, if you want me to stay,” Pinkie said. “I wanna learn everything I can about the old me before I do anything else, and you knew the old me, so I’m not gonna go anywhere.” She paused. “You, um, you really, um, you really want me to stay?”
“I’ve been looking for you for nine years,” Twilight said, laughing through her tears. “I’ve mourned you for eighteen and a half centuries. Pinkie Pie, you can stay here forever if you want.”
“I didn’t know,” Pinkie said. The sudden grave expression on her face was something the old carefree Pinkie Pie could never have worn. But this Pinkie Pie had many cares. “I didn’t know who I was, I didn’t know what the things I dreamed even meant. I’m so sorry, Twilight. If I’d known, I would have come and found you the day I woke up in my cave.”
“I have a few choice words for the Element of Harmony,” Twilight grumped, then she beamed at her first pony friend once again. “The world is changing. It’s changing every day. I like to think that it’s changing for the better. You’ll stay with me to see it change?”
Pinkie smiled an impossibly-huge smile and nodded.
Twilight grinned back. “You’re hungry?” Pinkie Pie nodded again, furiously this time. “Heh. You couldn’t have come to a better place,” she said, wiping her eyes once more and smiling wide. “Come with me down to breakfast.”
Twilight and Pinkie were laughing as they walked into the breakfast hall. Celestia looked up, startled by the sudden joyous outburst.
“And then, and then,” Twilight was saying, “The whole cake. The whole cake! You ate the whole cake!”
Pinkie screamed with delight. “Wow! Sounds like I used to be a bit of a pig!” She snorted, and then laughed even harder. “I still sound like one too!”
“Good morning, Sisters,” Twilight called, wiping tears from her eyes and leading the way to the buffet. “We were just talking about the time you visited Ponyville with Philomena, Biggest Sister.” She looked at her other Sister and started in shock. “Oh! Big Sister! Are you alright?”
Twilight left Pinkie’s side and hurried around the table. Luna looked exhausted, as if she were a mortal pony who’d just run a hundred-mile race. She seemed to be smaller and paler than usual, and her mane wasn’t the colour of midnight and floating on a magical breeze - its light-blue tangles were plastered to her forehead and neck. Her eyes were half-closed and she was breathing shallowly as she contemplated a bowl of spicy noodles - breakfast for the other Royals was usually dinner for Luna. She picked up a set of chopsticks with her forehoof and sighed. “I’m fine, Little Sister,” she said weakly. “I’ve been out all night. I’m just tired.”
“But,” Twilight objected, “but you can’t be tired. We don’t ever get tired. You and I flew all across Equestria yesterday at a ludicrous pace, and I’m not tired at all. And I didn’t sleep a wink last night. I was thinking about Pinkie,” she amended, only slightly untruthfully.
Luna managed an exhausted smile. “Magic is not my special talent, Little Sister. I don’t have the reserves or the skill that you do. Remember how I kept insisting that we stay together?” Twilight nodded. “I was feeding off your magic, I think. If I wasn’t, I don’t think I could have kept up. I tried to match yesterday’s pace last night on my own. I managed, in fact for a short while I even exceeded it. I’m afraid I burned myself out.”
“Is that even possible?” Celestia asked. She was sitting close to her Sister, her own buttered toast untouched on her plate. She was clearly too worried to eat. “I know we all have limits but I never imagined one of us would actually hit them. Without... Without somehow using our dark powers, that is.”
“Well, I guess I know what my own limit is,” Luna said quietly. She twirled a bunch of noodles around her chopsticks and slurped them down. “About enough magic to fly at sixty thousand miles per hour, for about twenty minutes. It took me another five hours to get back.” She took another mouthful. “I’ve never felt so, so empty in my life,” she mumbled around the mouthful. “I’ll be fine. I’m feeling better every minute. Sit down and eat.” She lifted her tired eyes and looked at their guest. “Pinkie Pie, how are you this day?”
“I’m fine,” the pink pony said, hesitatingly. She took Twilight’s cue and sat down at the long oak table, next to her friend. “I’m really hungry!”
Twilight was still shooting glances over at Luna. “What would you like? Cereal? Toast? Fruit? Scrambled eggs?”
“Oh, scrambled eggs!” Pinkie said. “I had eggs once, they’re really nice!”
Twilight spun the large glass turntable around on its pivot. “Try them on toast with some tomatoes and mushrooms,” she said, lifting the silver-domed lid of a large tray and gesturing for Pinkie to dig in. “And put some parmesan and hot sauce on them. You used to love them like that, so let’s see how good my memory is!”
The doors cracked open and Starburst clopped sleepily through them, wearing a bathrobe and yawning widely. “Morning, ladies, morning Sweetie,” he yawned, then he blinked. “Oh. Good morning, Pinkie Pie.”
“Good morning, sleepyhead!” she called back, her mouth bulging with eggs and tomatoes. “Try some of these, they’re good!” She swallowed the massive mouthful. “Really good!”
Luna pushed her empty bowl away. “Ahh. That was what I needed. I feel so much better,” she said. She looked it. Some of the tiredness had melted from her face. “So, when do we leave for another sweep, Little Sister?”
Twilight had been dreading this. She swallowed her mouthful of cornflakes and braced herself for the outburst that was sure to result. “I, uh, I don’t think we will, Big Sister. I think we should leave It alone.”
Luna blinked. “I beg your pardon?” She looked incredulous. “You can’t be serious. We can’t just leave It. We have to find It, we have to stop It before It has a chance to start!”
“No, really, Big Sister. We should let It be.”
“How can you say that?!” Luna spluttered. She stood up, her coat darkening, her tail lengthening. “We should be out there right now hunting It down! I still would be out there if I hadn’t used up all of my magical reserves!” As if to illustrate the point, there was a sharp snapping sound, Luna’s plain mane flashed and flared, and then it flowed into deep-blue sheets of midnight smoke. She looked around at it and snorted. “It seems my magic is returning. Shall I search on my own?”
“I thought about it last night. Starburst was right.” She noticed Luna’s confusion. “He made me see sense. Really. What can It do?”
“It can destroy all that we have built!”
“No It can’t! It needs one of us. It needs an alicorn. We’d know if It had invaded one of our minds. I’m not nineteen any more, Big Sister. I’m the Master of Magic. If It shows up, I can kill It.”
Luna frowned.
“It’s not dead. It’s been hiding for nineteen and a half centuries. Let It do Its worst. Let It try.”
“Have you forgotten what happened two days ago? The Windigo Storm! Explain to me how We can ignore that kind of threat!”
“Because they weren’t real,” Starburst put in. “I was using Sunfire spells to destroy them, and it was overkill. I could have used much less powerful spells. They weren’t really there. Ordinary unicorn guards will be able to stop them if they show up again. They’re training with the pegasi right now, Luna. There are pegasus chariots loaded with unicorns patrolling Equestria already.”
“We all overreacted,” Twilight said. She could see that Luna wasn’t convinced at all, that her mostly-nocturnal Sister was ready to leap out the window and go hunting again on her own. “Please, Luna. Please. Let’s just wait. It’s not here or we’d all feel It. It’s not out there, or we’d have found It yesterday. So that leaves only two possibilities.”
Luna frowned, but thought about it. She looked worried for a moment. “Oh. Yes.” She sat down again, nodding slowly. Her drooping tail crackled and flashed back into its usual magical self, but she ignored it. “Yes. You’re right. Well, either way, It seems to be taken care of.”
“Two possibilities?” Starburst asked. “Where? Where could It be if It’s not in Equestria?”
“Not just in Equestria,” Luna said. “Little Sister and myself searched everywhere we could yesterday. Equestria, Zebraxia, Neutophia, the Frozen North, both Big and Small Monster Islands, the Western and Southern deserts, everywhere. Everywhere we could go. And we should have found It. So It’s either fled to The Deadlands, which would mean that It’s no longer a problem, because It’ll be dead Itself. Or It’s hiding in Tartarus, in which case It’s trapped.”
Everypony but Pinkie shivered slightly. Hell wasn’t just a figment of the imagination. Hell was a real place, and the Princesses held its keys. If The Lunacy had fled there so they couldn’t find It, It would never be able to get out again.
“So what was this trip you mentioned?” Luna asked Twilight. “When you two came in. You took your phoenix to Ponyville, Big Sister?” she asked Celestia.
“Oh yes,” Celestia said, smiling. “One of my most precious memories. I’m afraid I wasn’t completely forthcoming on that day. I accepted Twilight’s invitation to meet the citizens of Ponyville, and I brought Philomena along with me. The poor thing was halfway through a regeneration cycle. I liked to test and help improve special talents, you see, and I rather hoped I might teach Fluttershy a lesson or two about kindness.” Celestia grinned at Twilight. “Your old friend taught me a thing or two about kindness that afternoon.”
“Fluttershy sounds like such a wonderful pony,” Pinkie Pie said, eyeing the scrambled egg tray again. “I wish I could remember her.”
Twilight spun the turntable around again. “I think it’s time we told you about yourself, Pinkie. How much do you remember about the old you?”
“I don’t know,” Pinkie said, pausing as she piled eggs onto her plate again. “I, uh, I guess I know of things, but I can’t remember anything that happened before... Before, um, before Rarity died.”
“Well,” Twilight said, “we’ll start right at the beginning. You were born on a rock farm, about sixty miles to the north of Ponyville. We’re in the same place now, really; we built this city around our old home. Your family grew gemstones, and to get the best ones you needed to move the rocks containing the crystal seeds around a lot. I don’t think you were very happy there.”
“Growing gems sounds like a lot of fun, though,” Pinkie said around a mouthful.
“It’s not,” Celestia said. “It’s hard, repetitive work, and though the rewards can be great, it didn’t suit your nature at all. You were a very different pony than your parents and sisters, Pinkie Pie. They seemed to enjoy it, but you left just as soon as you could. I believe you headed in the direction of a certain magical rainbow you’d seen the previous year.”
“We all saw it, the six of us. Rainbow Dash and myself were both seven, you’d just turned eight, Applejack was eight as well, coming up towards nine, and Fluttershy and Rarity were nearly ten. Dash started the chain that brought us all together when she did the impossible. We all got our Cutie Marks that day. No, I think you got yours the following morning. Dash’s Sonic Rainboom let you discover your special talent for making other ponies happy.”
“I... I used to make ponies happy?” Pinkie asked quietly, setting down her fork now that her plate was empty for the second time. “How? How did I do that?”
“Cooking and baking, and celebrations of all kinds. The Cakes gave you Sugar Cube Corner when they retired. Uh, Carrot and Cup, that is. You left your parents’ farm when you were only nine or so and travelled to Ponyville. The Cakes took you in, sorta adopted you, and they gave you their business.” Twilight smiled. “You were probably the greatest pastry chef the world ever saw, Pinkie.”
“I can cook? I can bake?!” She looked astounded.
“We’ll pay a visit to the Palace Kitchens after breakfast and see if you remember anything,” Celestia grinned. “Oh yes, Pinkie Pie, you were a most magnificent baker. The cake you made for Twilight’s coronation was almost a hundred feet across, you know. Well, it did have to feed a few thousand ponies,” she chuckled.
Everypony looked around as the hall doors opened again. A pair of burly earth guards stuck their heads in, their grim faces turning in every direction for a moment, then they withdrew. An absolute gaggle of guards bustled through the doors. The teeming mass seemed to open up, revealing a glum-looking purple pegacorn, who trotted out of the throng and towards the table.
“‘Morning, guys,” Glim said quietly. She was staring at the floor as she walked over to her booster cushion, a thin book of some sort tucked under one wing. The guards all left, closing the doors behind themselves again.
“This is getting ridiculous, Sweetie,” Twilight murmured to Starburst. “There’s no danger, not really. Not with us here.”
He nodded in agreement. “Let’s call off the order. What do you think?” he asked Celestia and Luna quietly. They both nodded.
“I don’t like to admit it, but Little Sister is right. And you’re right,” Luna said to Starburst. “Let’s wait for It to make Its move, if It can. And then we’ll defeat It forever.” She raised her voice. “Good morning, Glim,” she called to her niece.
“‘Morning, Auntie Luna,” the little filly said flatly.
“Are you alright, Sweetheart?” Twilight asked, her brow furrowed.
“No,” Glim said morosely. She sat down at the far end of the table and put her drawing book and a pencil down next to her cereal bowl. “I had nightmares again, Momma. Same as last night. Those Wingding things.”
Starburst levitated a milk jug over to her. “Windigoes?” She nodded. “Don’t worry, Sweetheart. Don’t worry. The nightmares will go away soon. Just a few more nights, and you’ll forget them. You can sleep with us tonight. We can cast a spell to keep the nightmares away. Can we?” he asked Twilight softly, frowning when his wife shook her head gently. “Well, we’ll make sure you have a good night’s sleep somehow, I’m sure.”
“They cause nightmares?” Pinkie said. “How do they do that? And they’re all gone now, and they weren’t real anyway.”
Celestia spoke quietly, so Glim wouldn’t hear. The little pony was staring down at the table and crunching down her bowl of oats. “Windigoes are the most horrific things in existence, Pinkie Pie. Their appearance, their shape, whatever, it’s ingrained into the ancient memory of all ponykind. The worst possible nightmare come true. Plague, famine, war, death. Utter despair. The Windigo is the manifestation of all these things. Ponies can’t help but to experience nightmares after seeing one. It’s the deepest, darkest part of who we all are.”
“But they weren’t real,” Pinkie said. “The Element told me that they can’t be destroyed, but you killed loads of them the other day. So they can’t have been real.”
“That’s true,” Twilight said. All of the adults were clustered together around the same end of the long rectangular table, leaving Glim to her breakfast down at the far end. “They caused a lot of injuries though, which is something else they’re not supposed to be able to do. When’s the ceremony?” Twilight asked Celestia.
“It starts at one this afternoon in the Court Hall. We have three hundred and twenty two High Orders of Equestria to bestow on the injured guards. You should come, Pinkie Pie.”
Twilight continued. “Just like we were saying before, they could be destroyed with magic. And that’s utterly impossible.”
Starburst looked up from his own plate of scrambled eggs and nodded. “Yeah, I looked them up again yesterday when Sweetie and Luna were out on their mission. I went down to the library and found Bestarium Diabolimagicka.”
Pinkie blinked at him. “What's Bumsteadia Bamagicums?” she said, her eyes askew.
“It’s a book. It’s, uh, it’s ‘The book of evil magical creatures.’ It’s a very old book, the copy we have was translated from the original writings of Starswirl the Bearded himself.”
“Translated by me, in fact,” Luna said. “I hope I did the original justice.”
“I’d say you did. It’s Forbidden, Pinkie. Nopony can just go and read it, there’s a whole stack of paperwork and interviews and crap that needs to be filled out just to see the cover, let alone the text itself. Well, unless you’re one of us. Being married to a Royal Pony Sister tends to cut right through any red tape in the blink of an eye,” he said, shooting Twilight a quirky grin which she returned, despite the subject matter.
“Oh,” Pinkie said. “A forbidden book?” She looked slightly wistful for a moment. “I’ve never read a book,” she said quietly. “I know how to read but I can’t remember ever learning how. I can read signs and so on. ‘Toasted Honey-Nut Oats, the perfect start to a growing foal’s day,’” she read aloud off one of the boxes of cereal. “But I’ve never read a book, I think. There are forbidden books?”
“You probably don’t want to read this one. The original manuscripts were destroyed years ago. There’s only one copy in existence and it’s kept under magical lock and key. It’s down in the secret room in the Palace Library with all the other Forbidden works.” Starburst looked slightly sheepish for a moment. “It’s one of the most dangerous books ever written, because it tells you how to summon chimeras and draconequui and so on. And Sweetie checked it out and gave it to me to read when I was only ten. I guess she thought I was made of pretty tough stuff. ‘Of all that is foul in the world, Windigoes are the very, very foulest. Harbingers of hopelessness and despair, of suffering and death, such manifestations of Plague may not be defeated directly,’” he quoted. “Malicious, horrible, but not really alive. They’re magical, not physical. I killed half a dozen myself but I shouldn’t have been able to.” He looked at Twilight. “And you destroyed them all. Millions. Millions and millions of them and you burned them to dust when you lost control. If they really were Windigoes, you’d never have been able to do that.”
They sat in silence for a moment, considering. If these imitation Windigoes came again, unicorns would be able to destroy them. It was certain that The Lunacy had brought them, and there was now a chance that it was dead or trapped forever -
“Anyway!” Pinkie said suddenly, making everypony jump. Glim looked up from where she was doodling in her book. “Can you tell me about him? What was his name? What was he like? Oooh! Twilight, have you got pictures of him?”
Twilight’s eyebrows kinked together. “Yeah, if there was any doubt before, it’s gone now. You are definitely Pinkie Pie.” She chuckled. “What are you talking about?”
Pinkie grinned. “If I had kids and grandkids and great-grandkids, I must have had a husband too, right? Who was he?”
“Oh!” Twilight said. “Hmm. I’ll go and get some pictures in a minute. He was a very fine earth pony called Lucky. Although I don’t know who was luckier, you or him,” she said with a lopsided grin.
“Lucky,” Pinkie said slowly. “Lucky. I like that name.”
“You liked more than his name,” Luna said, smirking.
“He was a chef, as it happened,” Twilight said. “It started out as a contract for Sugar Cube Corner to supply desserts for his restaurant in Canterlot. It took him about two months before he sold the place and moved in with you in Ponyville, and it ended with you two getting married. Well no, it didn’t end there,” Twilight admitted. “It never ended. You had so many kids, so many grandkids. It never ended. It was... wonderful.” Twilight could see tears in Pinkie’s eyes. Her own were pricking again too.
Luna must have picked up on their emotions, because she abruptly changed the subject. “We had many adventures before you met your fine husband, Pinkie Pie. The first time I was properly introduced to you is still one of the happiest nights of my life. I wasn’t sure about you at first, though. You kept running away from me, you see, and you were wearing the least frightening chicken costume I’d ever seen.”
“I, uh...” Pinkie’s face went completely blank. “Why was I wearing a chicken costume?” she asked, utterly bewildered.
“Do you remember how I used to talk?” Luna said to a smirking Twilight. Her coat was its old colour now - she’d clearly recovered fast. “And how much of an ass I made of myself when I visited Ponyville? You remember, the first Night Mare Night after my recovery?”
“Hey, you told me about that,” Starburst said to Twilight. He looked at Luna. “After Twilight and her friends saved you and got rid of Night Mare Moon, right? Pinkie, you’re gonna love this story!”
“But why the hay was I wearing a chicken costume?” Pinkie asked again. “If it was Night Mare Night why wasn’t I wearing a scary costume? Chickens aren’t scary!”
“Because you’re Pinkie Pie,” Twilight said, barely managing to keep a straight face.
Luna nodded, chuckling. “I slept for more than four months after my return from the moon, four months to recover my magic and my strength. I woke up from my recovery and I found that it was the evening of the thirty-first of October. I didn’t even tell Big Sister, I just flew to Ponyville to greet all of my subjects and to see the six ponies who had saved me again. What a disaster! Everypony still believed that I was Night Mare Moon. My magic had returned so I didn’t look like a mortal pony, as I did when Big Sister and myself first visited Ponyville. And not to mention that Royal plurals and formal address had fallen out of use.” She shot Celestia a glare, though she was still smiling. “Somepony never mentioned that to me.”
Celestia started to laugh as well. “I didn’t really have much of a chance, Little Sister.”
Luna snorted. “‘Thou’ doesn’t have the same ring to it in Equish. It sounds far more regal in Old Equestrian.”
Starburst nudged Twilight gently. She glanced at him, to see that he was looking at Glim. The little pony was chewing on the end of her pencil and frowning down at her exercise book, where she seemed to have drawn something squiggly and pointed. That wasn’t what had caught his attention, though. Glim’s horn was flickering very faintly.
The proud parents smiled at each other. Their filly’s magic was beginning to manifest. They’d have to talk to her about it, probably straight after breakfast. She was sure to have powerful magical abilities, and she’d apparently developed them early, just like both her mother and her father had done. They’d have to teach her how to hold her magic in check, probably this very day, because uncontrolled magical outbursts could be dangerous.
“What about the time when that travelling illusionist came to Ponyville? Do you remember?” Celestia was saying.
“Oh, I remember,” Twilight said, turning back to the discussion. “She was good, very good with illusion spells. Quite an impressive special talent.” She frowned. Her memories of the event were fuzzy. She concentrated, and they sharpened a little. Something important had happened that day... No, it was that night...
“She’d been in Canterlot the week before. Again I must confess that I sent her to Ponyville myself, Littlest Sister. And once again, everything turned out differently - and far more spectacularly - to how I’d thought it would.”
“What do you mean?” Twilight was thinking hard, trying to remember. There’d been some kind of a disturbance, she was sure. The memory of an enormous star-streaked blue something was taking shape...
“The report you sent me was wonderfully vague,” Celestia chuckled. “Spike sent me a letter filling in the details. That was when I first became concerned about your magic, Littlest Sister. I always knew you would be powerful, but the reports of your magical besting of the Ursa astounded me.”
Twilight’s mouth fell open.
Oh my goodness, that’s right. It was an Ursa. An Ursa! What was I thinking!
“I don’t know this story,” Luna said. “Little Sister defeated an Ursa when she was mortal? Before The Element transformed her?” She looked impressed.
“There were two curious young colts from Ponyville that were absolutely taken in with that particular showmare. Those two little whelps actually managed to find an Ursa, an honest-to-goodness Ursa, and they lured it back to town, and then -”
Pinkie gasped. She’d felt it first, though she didn’t know what she was feeling. An instant later, Twilight and Starburst both felt an enormous surge of magic, like a gale screaming through their magically-aware minds. They whipped their heads around to stare at their daughter, the source of the gale, a fraction of a second before the little filly’s horn flashed bright white.
They both recognised the type of spell that Glim was casting by its unique magical tone. Neither of them could believe it. They both reacted completely by instinct.
Celestia and Luna had felt the magical disturbance by now. Their heads started to turn, following their Sister’s gaze, just as Starburst vanished and then reappeared directly behind Glim, forehooves spread, a thick web of sparkling magical streamers flooding from his own illuminated horn. They wrapped all around his back and he reached out towards his daughter as she shrieked, her eyes going blank and exploding with hot white light. Twilight had kicked herself back from the table and hit her Sisters and her old friend with a hard psychokinetic shove. Celestia, Luna and Pinkie Pie yelled in surprise as they flew off their cushions and fell awkwardly, sprawled on the floor, sliding backwards, out of the line of fire.
Everything in the room seemed to blaze with light for a moment. A hot streak of magic exploded from Twilight Glimmer’s horn and struck the heavy table, which burst into blazing purple flames and rocketed away from the filly with enough force to smash itself to flaming dust against the thick tower wall. The recoil shot Glim off her cushion and straight into her father’s magically-padded grip. Magical inertia propelled both stallion and filly backwards at an impossible speed. With an ear-shattering smash they blasted right through the thick stone wall as if it were nothing more than wet paper.
Celestia and Luna were already on their hooves again. As the unicorn-earth pony thrashed upright, the two alicorns charged out of the small crumbling hole in the wall, right on Twilight’s tail. Pinkie sprang from the floor and galloped over to the edge of the hole. The broken stone was glowing red and starting to melt in places, but it couldn’t burn her immortal hooves. She watched, gaping in stunned amazement as the three tall alicorns moved faster than should have been possible to catch up to the two falling mortal ponies. They were moving so fast that Pinkie’s brain was struggling to catch up with what her eyes could see.
Starburst ground his teeth and eyelids together and tried to ignore the pain. He hurt all over, every inch of skin, every strand of hair felt like it was on fire. His horn felt like somepony had tried to wrench it from his skull. Glim was thrashing and screaming, her eyes still flaming with white light, violent blasts of raw magic exploding in every direction from her horn. He wrestled his forelegs around her, tried to hold her tight. The magic she was channeling was burning him, singeing his coat, blistering his skin. He managed to block it by remoulding the thick protective shell he’d cast over his back into a close-fitting shield around his forehooves and chest, then he turned his attention to the most important issue. They were falling and he couldn’t see. He cast a levitation spell, and they slowed and came to a bobbing halt, and then he felt somepony’s hooves take his daughter. He let her go and straightened in the air, blinked, shook himself, and looked around.
He caught sight of Pinkie Pie staring with wide eyes and mouth from the glowing hole he’d made in the breakfast hall’s wall. The courtyard thirty feet below, thankfully empty of ponies this early in the day, was strewn with the shattered stony rubble that had been thick granite wall panels just a moment ago. He looked up. His wife and Sisters-in-law were crowded together just above him. He floated upwards through the air, running his hooves along his forelegs to check how badly he’d been burned. It didn’t hurt yet but he was sure it would start to, and soon. It was dangerous to be so close to the caster of such a spell, though he couldn’t even begin to fathom how his daughter had managed to do it. Fully-grown trained unicorns had trouble with annihilation spells, even the weak variations of them. He’d never even attempted an ekragokinetic spell of that magnitude. He bobbed higher, shaking his head and blinking, until he was hovering right next to his wife.
Twilight was holding Glim by the shoulders, shaking the little filly gently and staring straight into her blazing eyes. “Glim! Sweetheart! Momma’s here!” Starburst appeared at her side, and she amended. “Daddy and Momma are here! Everything’s alright, everything’s okay!” Glim twitched, shuddered, shrieked again. “Glim, listen to me! Twilight said urgently. “Calm down. Come on, calm down.” She made her own voice gentle, but firm, as she said this. “Everything is fine. Please, Sweetheart, calm -”
Twilight was cut off mid-sentence as one of the seemingly-random blasts of magic that were exploding from the little filly’s horn hit her squarely in the face. The filly and the alicorn both shuddered as the spell made contact. Twilight’s horn pulsed brightly for an instant.
Twilight winced, her face blazing with flames for a heartbeat before the magical purple fire died. She seemed to be fine, completely unharmed - but Glim’s eyes had rolled back into her head, her shrieks choked off into silence. Her horn winked out, the tip glowing - not soft purple from her magical aura; it had been heated to dull orange-red incandescence - and then her head flopped to the side, she gurgled, and passed out. “No! Oh no!” Twilight shouted in horror as she gathered her daughter to her chest. She looked around wildly, her eyes finding Starburst first of all. He looked awful, his mane blackened, his forelegs charred, his bathrobe ruined and smoking faintly, but that was nothing compared to the ashen expression on his face. He knew what had just occurred and, just like Twilight, he couldn’t believe it had actually happened. Her Sisters were right there as well, and they, too, looked aghast. “I’m taking her to her bedroom!” Twilight shrieked. Then she vanished with a puff of magenta magic.
Three more magical flashes followed in quick succession. Celestia trotted quickly over to Twilight as the youngest alicorn laid her unconscious daughter on the large, soft bed. Smoke was streaming from the tip of Glim’s glowing horn as it started to smoulder. Twilight cast a spell to remove the heat before it caused any real damage. The topmost quarter-inch of the filly’s horn cracked and crumbled into dusty-black ash on her pillow. Her eyelids fluttered madly, eyes vibrating sideways in their sockets.
Luna had flitted to Starburst’s side, supporting the mortal unicorn. He looked pale and shaky. Suddenly, his eyes and cheeks bulged and he galloped away from Luna and into Glim’s private bathroom, slamming the door behind him with a shout of magic. The sounds of somepony being violently sick filtered through the tightly-closed door.
Twilight was rubbing her daughter’s face gently. “I pulled her magic from her. I didn’t mean to but when she hit me with that ekragokinetic spell, I slipped up, I lost control, I didn’t have time to react, I mean my instincts, my magic...”
Celestia and Luna both knew exactly what had just happened. Magic could not be cast against an unwilling alicorn. The Sisters were unique, and they had unique magical defences. Their instinctive alicorn reaction to block an unexpected offensive spell was to rip all of the spellcaster’s magic out through the unfortunate unicorn’s horn. Such a thing was extremely dangerous for the mortal pony in question. Even mundane everyday things like taking a sheaf of papers from another pony’s levitation required careful control. The three alicorns needed to be particularly mindful of this fact, in case they accidentally maimed or killed one of their mortal subjects.
And Twilight had apparently done this to her eight-year-old daughter.
Twilight’s and Celestia’s horns were both flickering wildly as they bent over the small winged unicorn. Luna vanished with a pop of silver light, though the other two Sisters didn't pay any attention to that. They both looked up and at each other.
“She’s breathing evenly. Her heart’s beating. Fast, but regular,” Celestia said. “She’ll be fine. Just a shock. And you'll have no trouble growing her horn back, of course. Don’t feel bad, Littlest Sister. We’ve all done that before, and no harm done again. She’s going to be fine. Perfectly fine.” The tall white alicorn swallowed. “It could have been far worse, Twilight.”
Twilight was shaking her head furiously, which threw her tears all over the place. “Shut up! Shut up! Don’t - Don’t even say it! We’ve never done that before! Not to that extent! I could have killed her! Killed her! What was I thinking, how did I -” Twilight choked.
“Twilight Sparkle!”
Celestia’s use of her full name made Twilight start. She looked at her Biggest Sister. Celestia was staring at her with the sternest expression she’d ever seen. She balked.
“This is not your fault, and I will not let you beat yourself up about it!” Celestia said loudly, in a tone that Twilight recognised instantly, despite not having heard it for more than nineteen hundred years. The eldest Eternal Sister seemed to grow in stature as she glared fiercely at the youngest. “Get a hold of yourself, Littlest Sister. Twilight Glimmer needs you!”
Twilight backed up a pace. She felt like she was a child once more. Her face was blank for a fraction of a second, and then she seemed to visibly relax. She closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and then looked up at Celestia.
“Thank you, Biggest Sister. Now is not the time to panic.” She stepped forwards again to resume ministering to her child. “I believe I forgot myself for a moment there.”
“I’m sorry, Twilight,” Celestia said gently, stepping up to the bed again herself. “Your magic can heal her, and, as you say, now is not the time for panic.”
With a flash, Luna and Pinkie Pie appeared on the other side of Glim’s poster-bed. “I thought it was a bit rude to leave our guest stranded in the Breakfast Hall, especially with pieces of rock and burning wood everywhere,” Luna began, then she was cut off by a feathery-purple explosion from the bed.
With a gasp of pain and a thrashing of hooves, Glim sat bolt-upright, her eyelids screwed shut. “Ow! Ow, ow ow OW!” she squealed through her grinding teeth, her hooves flying to her forehead. “My horn! My horn!” Tears were streaming from the corners of her closed eyes.
Twilight cried out herself, from surprise in her case. She pushed Glim back down to the pillows as her horn started to glow, wrapping a thick painkilling spell around the blackened and destroyed tip of Glim’s horn. “Easy, Sweetheart. Momma’s here. Momma’s here.”
The sound of Glim’s bathroom door banging open made them all jump. “So’s Daddy,” Starburst called as he charged to Twilight’s side. “Lie down, Sweetheart. Don’t move. Mom’ll fix this.”
Mom certainly did. With a faint grinding-squeaking sound, Glim’s horn glowed bright red and seemed to twist around for a moment. The glow died as Twilight completed her healing spell. The tension left Glim as she relaxed and opened her eyes.
“It... It doesn’t hurt any more...” She reached up gingerly, tapped the slightly-raw point of her horn. It was sharper than it should be.
“We’ll have to file it,” Starburst said. “She could have somepony’s eye out with that.”
“Glim, Sweetheart,” Twilight was saying, still all-business. “I’m very sorry that I hurt you. I promise I’ll never do anything like it again. Promise.”
“But you didn’t hurt me, Momma, you stopped me. I couldn’t stop on my own, what happened, what was that?” Glim shivered. “That was the most horrible thing ever, Momma!”
“Your magic has awakened,” Twilight said, looking very hard at her small daughter. “Where did you learn that spell?”
“Spell? I did a spell?” Glim asked. She looked up, touched her horn once again. “Hey, you’re right! I did a spell!”
“But where did you learn it?” Twilight pressed.
Starburst cut in. “What Momma means is, what were you doing right before all of this happened? Did you think of something or will your mind to make something happen?”
“Well, no,” she said quietly. “I was thinking about the star I drew, Daddy.”
“Star?” Starburst and the three alicorns all asked together. Pinkie just stood at the bedside, looking both interested in what was happening and embarrassed to be intruding on a clearly private moment.
“Yeah, the star I dreamed about last night. I drew it and I was looking at it and thinking about how funny it looked and how it was more a flower than a star and then everything got all hot and bright and I wanted to be sick and then it started to hurt and I couldn’t see any more and then my horn hurt real bad and...” She trailed off into silence.
“You drew something you dreamed? Could you show us?” Luna asked gently.
“Uh, sure, I guess.” She looked around. “Where’s my drawing book?”
“The book you had at the table? It’s gone, Sweetheart,” Starburst said. “It, uh, it caught fire. Could you draw it again?”
“Aw!” Glim protested. “I had loads of drawings in that book!”
“Could you draw it again?” Twilight pressed. “We need to see it, Sweetheart.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I can’t get it out of my mind.” She closed her eyes for a second. “Yeah, it’s right there.” Her forehoof traced a swooping pattern through the air. She opened her eyes and started to get up.
“No, Sweetheart. Stay on the bed.” Twilight pushed her gently back onto her pillows once again and levitated a few sheets of paper and a pencil across from Glim’s desk and popped them on the bed in front of her daughter. The little purple pony thought for a moment, then she picked up the pencil and started putting dots on the paper. She drew sixteen little tickmarks in a circle, like a clock with four too many hours.
“Offensive spell,” Twilight, Starburst, Luna and Celestia all said at once.
Glim looked up. “Huh?”
“That’s a spell map, Sweetheart,” Starburst said softly. “A sixteen-pointed spell is always an offensive spell, something you use to attack somepony else. They’re all offensive magic. Please, draw the spell but don’t think about it too hard.”
Glim touched the point of her pencil on the topmost mark she’d made. She started to draw a curving line, one that touched and looped and circled every point she’d made. The long, winding curve was completed when she joined the end of the line back up to the start again. She looked up.
She jumped. “Momma!” she exclaimed, a little frightened by the expression on her mother’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Where did you learn this spell?” Twilight asked sharply.
“I told you, I dreamed it last night! I can’t get it out of my head!”
“That’s impossible. Hardly anypony knows this spell. It’s far too dangerous to be public knowledge, and very few ponies have the ability to cast it anyway.” Twilight looked at her husband. “You know it, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I read it in ‘Magic Of Last Resort,’ back when I was fifteen or so. But I can’t see how Glim could have found it. That book’s Forbidden. It has been for hundreds of years.”
“Glim, Sweetheart,” Twilight said, trying to sound as patient as she could, “You can’t have dreamed this spell. It’s a powerful spell that has no use other than to cause destruction. You must have seen it somewhere before. Can you think where?”
Glim shook her head. “I dunno where I know it from, Momma. I dreamed it. Honest.”
Twilight shook her own head. “Spells want to be remembered. A sufficiently-skilled unicorn only has to see the pattern once and they can remember the spell for the rest of their lives. You must have seen it somewhere before, Sweetheart. Please, tell me where.”
The purple pegacorn’s mouth was starting to scrunch up. “Momma, I swear! I dreamed it! I swear! I’ve never seen anything like that flower before!”
“Flower?” Twilight glanced down at the paper. It did sort-of look like a sixteen-pointed flower, made of a crisscrossing spaghetti of pencil lines. “Oh. Flower.”
“Sweetie, I need a word,” Starburst muttered in Twilight’s ear. “We’ll be right back, Sweetheart,” he said to Glim. “Momma and me have something to talk about.”
“What? What do you hafta talk about?” Glim began, making as if to sit up again. Celestia pushed her gently down this time.
“It’s alright, Glim. I think you’ll be happy with what they’re talking about,” she said to her niece with a wink and a grin.
“That was astounding,” Starburst muttered once they were far enough away from the bed to be out of earshot. “More powerful than me at that age, do you think?”
“I’d say there’s the same level of magical potential there. But yes, incredibly high, incredibly potent. More to the point, where did she learn that spell?” Twilight said. “When I was eight I could have probably cast it, if I’d known the spell. So could you. You transfigured your examiner and nearly destroyed the admissions testing hall back when you were seven. But neither of us could have possibly known that spell, and it takes practice to cast a sixteen-pointer. Our wild magic was powerful and dangerous, but unfocused.”
Starburst nodded knowingly. “That spell was perfectly cast, perfectly focused. If she’d hit me with that spell, I’d be dead right now.”
“Well, one thing’s for certain. She has to be trained, and soon. With that level of magical potential, she could destroy the city if she’s not careful.” Starburst nodded at this.
They turned around and walked over to their daughter’s bed. They were both smiling, and both smiles were quite genuine. Glim looked up, her worry vanishing as her parents rejoined the other ponies.
“Good news, Sweetheart,” Starburst said. “You’re going to Princess Twilight’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Your lessons start right now.”
“I’m gonna learn magic?!” Glim shrieked, leaping to her hooves. “But I’m too young! I thought I was too young!”
“We were waiting for something just like this,” Twilight said. “Well, not exactly like this, but it’s clear that it’s time we taught you magic.”
Glim squealed with delight. Before anypony could stop her, she’d leaped off her bed and started running around her room, flapping her wings madly and bouncing on her hooftips, shouting all the while with joy. She was gonna learn magic!
Behind the impenetrable walls of her heart, The Lunacy roared with delight too.
A well-thought-out plan. Just five years to go, and Equestria would die.